Low Impact

One thing I’ve never been able to understand is the argument that some people make that “climate change isn’t proven, so its premature to take action”. The obvious flaw is that the risk that climate change represents, in the form of ecosystem collapse, famines and disease is so great that we can’t afford to take that chance.

Its exactly the reason why we get our houses insured. The chance of your house burning down any given year may be only 1 in 100 (probably even less!), but we can’t afford to take the risk of losing all our possessions. So, we take action (get insurance) to protect against that possibility.

A friend recently sent me a link to a video, where a guy makes this point in relation to… Continue reading

I saw this story on the ABC News web site today in which Dr Brendan Nelson (Federal Leader of the Opposition) said that cuts of 25 to 30% of Australian carbon emissions by 2020 would “have [a] devastating impact on our economic development”. This was in response to reports that the Australian delegation to a working group at the United Nations talks in Bali has said that it supports cuts of 25 to 40 per cent for developed countries by 2020.

I found his statement pretty disappointing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said that current research suggests that emissions will need to be cut by at least 50% by 2050 in order to limit the average global temperature increase to no more than 2… Continue reading

GetUp!, a community advocacy organisation, recently made headlines here in Australia by airing a commercial during the AFL Grand Final that parodied the Government’s current run of climate change advertisements. They accomplished this by raising $200,000 in donations in just 3 days - quite a feat!

One of GetUp!’s campaigns is to encourage the government to take more serious steps on climate change, and this parody ad forms part of it. For those who haven’t seen it, the current government ad lists some of the funding and programs the government is involved in to fight climate change, interspersed with “everyday people” quoting lines like “I don’t know much about geosequestration, but changing my light globes to more efficient ones? I can do that!”.

There has… Continue reading